Motion and the dialectical view of the world

László Szôkely

pp. 241-255

in: Studies in East European Thought 39, 1990.

Abstract

We have seen two recent Soviet interpretations of Zeno's paradoxes concerning motion. They have a common pecularity: both oppose the standard interpretation accepted by many followers of dialectical materialism. That standard view, interpreting the motion-paradoxes following Hegel and Engels, advances them to support the "contradiction-ontology" of dialectical materialism and to apply them as an argument to demonstrate that we need to restrict the logical law of non-contradiction and transcend traditional logic. While this argument is refuted by Vojšvilo concretely, its invalidity follows indirectly form Janovskaja's essay too. At the same time, Janovskaja seeks for a deeper understanding of Zeno's paradoxes, not in the contradictory feature of reality but in the epistemological relation; thus, in this respect she breaks with the "contradiction-ontology" of dialectical materialism, which has a clearly metaphysical character. Though Vojšvilo's essay does not contain such an element, still — by analysing the formula given by him for the description of motion without logical contradiction — it permits the conjecture that one can speak correctly of the so-called contradictory nature of motion only in the context of the subject-object relation.We might also observe that both Vojšvilo and Janovskaja's interpretations are relevant not only from the point of view of the history of dialectical materialism, but also with regard to actual research in paraconsistent logics.